Today’s workout only had three different exercises, but boy, it was a tough one!

Drop sets are really taxing, primarily because they do not allow any rest between sets, other than adjusting the weights. Today we did triple drop sets for the Butterfly, Chest Press Machine, and Incline Dumbbell Presses. This really wore me out. Subsequently, I’ll be doing two separate cardio workouts separately. I just didn’t have the juice to do a cardio session after the weights. This leads me to another topic called “instinctive exercise”.

The Instinctive Training Principle

The Instinctive Training Principle was initially coined by Joe Wieder (Giese, 2005). This principle recommends that you “listen” to your body as you exercise. For most of us, we rely on others to provide us a workout routine. We take the routine, write it down in a workout log, and we go to the gym to knock it out. The same follows for our supplementation and the food we ingest. What I’ve learned over the years is that each one of us is an individual. Some supplements will work as advertised, while others won’t. The same goes for what you eat and what exercise routines you follow.

What does this mean? It means you are being honest with yourself. If you are doing an exercise and your routine dictates that you do so many reps, do you stop when you are at the peak of the number it recommends, or do you keep going until YOU hit failure? This is the key. Don’t let a routine dictate what you do; use the routine you are following as a guide. This principle can work the other way as well. If you are supposed to hit so many reps and you can’t get there, no problem, get as many reps as you can, drop the weight for the next set and try again.

Here’s another example. Based on your individual biomechanics, there may be exercises that just don’t work for you. For me, because of my back surgery, I’ve lost a lot of flexibility in my lower back. This means that my biomechanics no longer allow me to do really deep Squats. Because I have some nerve damage in my left leg, it also has affected my ability to do Lunges (my balance is way off because of the atrophy experienced in my left leg. Does this stop me? No. I merely have to adjust the exercises in a routine and adapt them to my personal biomechanics. Hence, I do assisted lunges by balancing using a bar or something to grab onto. I also use knee wraps to further stabilize my balance to avoid injury.